Despite witnessing the slaughter scenes of his family and relatives, spending days amid dead bodies and blood during the genocide and post-genocide hardships, Gasore has managed to overcome the past and committed to change the lives of the community he survived from.
Currently he’s married and has three children; he has regained the hope and works towards the bright future of the country.
{{How he survived the genocide}}
Ntarama is among the regions where the genocide plan was experimented before 1994. Though he was too young, Gasore says that he started facing discrimination in school back in 1992.
“Ntarama is among places where genocide plan was experimented from, with different discrimination activities but in 1992 murders started and people were killed from their homes,” he recounts.
Some members of Gasore’s family had been living in Kigali, but, he and grandmother had been living in Ntarama. When the genocide started, Gasore and his grandmother sought refuge in Ntarama Catholic Church where his grandmother was murdered before his eyes.
Gasore and some Tutsi who had survived the murder at the Church sought refuge at a nearby primary school where they used to spend nights and spend daytime in papyrus swamp at River Akanyaru.
When perpetrators found their whereabouts, they launched attacks on them and killed some but Gasore survived. He says that attackers had arms and traditional weapons which Tutsi failed to resist.
Luckily, Gasore and some people who were still in the papyrus swamp were saved by former Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA), a force that stopped the genocide.
{{Healing journey}}
Like other survivors, the genocide left Gasore with emotional and physical scars.
“It was not easy in the post-genocide period as we had lost our beloved parents and friends, we were scattered, traumatized and bereft of human emotions,” he explains.
Gasore was supported to resume school. In 2002, when he was in senior two, he reflected on all hardships he faced and how he survived the genocide and decided to shape his future.
He later found that he was talented in athletics which he carried on in high school; the sports won him a scholarship and earned him some money which he used in supporting other vulnerable children.
“After realizing that I’m passionate in athletics, it helped me to regain the hope. I played for my then school and won different competitions to the national level,” he recalls.
“After completing high school, different universities offered me free scholarship so that I would play for them. I chose to join Abilene Christian University in USA under a scholarship thanks to sportsmanship in me,” he adds.
At the university, Gasore raised his bar in athletics and networked with many people of different backgrounds.
In 2008, Gasore started different activities to support Rwandan community starting from his home area, Ntarama.
“I thought that I should take my activities in Ntarama, a region where I survived from. Then I started with small activities like donating domestic animals to people and paying their health insurance among other activities,” he said.
He said that after marriage in 2010, he started to think widely and establishing sustainable activities in Ntarama and across the country.
{{How Gasore’s activities impact the community }}
In 2014, Gasore published a book dubbed ‘My Day to Die’ and sold many copies which earned him money to buy a plot which he used in constructing a Centre for his foundation ‘Gasore Serge Foundation Community’.
Through his foundation in 2016 he started to construct different houses and currently has 15 houses for different purposes.
They are used for nursery schooling, teaching children from poor families in the community, health post and people use houses as a centre for reconciling families and teach handcraft and tailoring to women from the community.
As children in the school are from poor families, he started different programmes like serving them with porridge, food and milk.
In the Centre he rears domestic animals which he donates to vulnerable people.
Gasore Serge Foundation Community has 34 permanent employees and 150 part time jobs.
{{Future dreams}}
Gasore said that he plans to construct a primary school as part of taking development activities close to the people.
“I think that I will stop at that primary school and concentrate on my family as I will have provided possible contribution to the lives of the community. Those activities will go in hands of people for their management,” he said.
In February this year, Gasore was awarded by Abilene Christian University as a person who has established activities that impact the society. Also his wife Espérance Gasore who manages the health post, was in March awarded by the USA embassy in Rwanda as an outstanding woman.
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